I hold my combats boots and socks in my hands, with my pants folded up my mid-calf, as I stand at the edge of the shore watching the ocean water lap gently up and down. The moist sand squishes between my toes, and my ankles get swallowed by water and regurgitated, swallowed again, and back. I wiggle my toes and smile. The beach is not my most favorite place in the world, but it is an amazing sight to see in comparison to the Underground.
When I'm done, I put my socks and boots in my backpack and keep walking west, barefooted this time. After about a half mile, a familiar smell fills my nose. No, it's not pot this time. It's the smell of a rotting corpse. I follow the scent curiously until, lo and behold, I find the source of the emitted stench....
The body is bloated and stinks of rotting meat. In a few visible places (the ones not covered by clothes), the skin has ruptured from the gaseous pressure. The skin is a gorgeous marbled color, the purplish veins popping against the paling skin from the transport of sulfhæmoglobin. Maggots crawl in and out of the mouth, which has slacked to an "O" form following rigor mortis, as well as the nostrils and the places where the skin has ruptured.
You can still tell the body was a woman in life. Her hair has thinned and the scalp has tightened, revealing the very roots of the dark colored hair. She has defined cheekbones, and a patch of sand the color of dried blood below her head suggest some sort of head trauma being the cause of death. I look up instinctively, and see a steep cliff along the mountaintop that parallels this part of the island beach. As I look back down at the body, I decide that she must have fallen. Poor girl.
I crouch down and close her eyelids.
As I stand back up, I find myself wondering if she was one of the (former) survivors of the plane crash that put me here. I wonder who she is. What's her name? Where was she going, and why? I kneel down and search her pockets, looking for some sort of identification -- a driver's license, a passport, or even a business card. Aha! I find a wallet, and open it up. There's a driver's license inside, showing the woman, alive, with a small smile and her dark brown hair cascading to her shoulders. Her name was Alice White.
I put the wallet back where I found it, and take one last look at Alice White's body before stepping over it and continuing westward.
Megumi Kurosawa -- Day Eleven
ft. the corpse of Alice White
I hold my combats boots and socks in my hands, with my pants folded up my mid-calf, as I stand at the edge of the shore watching the ocean water lap gently up and down. The moist sand squishes between my toes, and my ankles get swallowed by water and regurgitated, swallowed again, and back. I wiggle my toes and smile. The beach is not my most favorite place in the world, but it is an amazing sight to see in comparison to the Underground.
When I'm done, I put my socks and boots in my backpack and keep walking west, barefooted this time. After about a half mile, a familiar smell fills my nose. No, it's not pot this time. It's the smell of a rotting corpse. I follow the scent curiously until, lo and behold, I find the source of the emitted stench....
The body is bloated and stinks of rotting meat. In a few visible places (the ones not covered by clothes), the skin has ruptured from the gaseous pressure. The skin is a gorgeous marbled color, the purplish veins popping against the paling skin from the transport of sulfhæmoglobin. Maggots crawl in and out of the mouth, which has slacked to an "O" form following rigor mortis, as well as the nostrils and the places where the skin has ruptured.
You can still tell the body was a woman in life. Her hair has thinned and the scalp has tightened, revealing the very roots of the dark colored hair. She has defined cheekbones, and a patch of sand the color of dried blood below her head suggest some sort of head trauma being the cause of death. I look up instinctively, and see a steep cliff along the mountaintop that parallels this part of the island beach. As I look back down at the body, I decide that she must have fallen. Poor girl.
I crouch down and close her eyelids.
As I stand back up, I find myself wondering if she was one of the (former) survivors of the plane crash that put me here. I wonder who she is. What's her name? Where was she going, and why? I kneel down and search her pockets, looking for some sort of identification -- a driver's license, a passport, or even a business card. Aha! I find a wallet, and open it up. There's a driver's license inside, showing the woman, alive, with a small smile and her dark brown hair cascading to her shoulders. Her name was Alice White.
I put the wallet back where I found it, and take one last look at Alice White's body before stepping over it and continuing westward.